Arthur Schopenhauer's
Philosophy interested me - especially his book "The World as Will and Representation, but he was too pessimistic- an element I despised while reading.He was influenced by Sri Shankara's Advaitam and Buddha's Agnosticism -Sunyata - but he largely misinterpreted as most of the westerners did at that time. Reading the book was not a pleasure, but certainly it has Truth that cannot be ignored.
Schopenhauer confuses Will and
Instinct. According to him There is an unconscious will which is under the conscious will ... a Will of Imperious longing or
desire - this will is survival instinct (to him Will To Live). This Will is the only unchangeable thing in the mind which gives unity to consciousness. Now the question arises Is Will in the mind or Heart ?. He
says Men are driven by what the feel, so where does feeling stem from - heart or mind ?. A little later he also says
Body is also the product of will, meaning to say that emotional changes and internal movement of the body form one complex unit. So it conforms to Behavioural Psychology Theory, (for example emotion- anger increases dopamine - internal hormone level), a kind of an idea that everything has to be propotionate (physical and cerebral), for the body to survive. So to him Will is the necessary element or whatever we choose to call it, does this function. Will is the Universal cause in ourselves. We Need to Live is the first knowledge.
Will to Live is corelated to Will to Reproduce. Here he blatantly refuses any feeling factor between man and woman - in one word, he dismisses Love. Reproduction is the ultimate goal of an organism, according to him Law of Sexual Attraction is mutual fitness to procreate, in the case of man extiction of the generative power fortells
death. Since Will is the supreme cause, and It Will Be, there is no victory over it, whether one wishes or not it has to be, so the world is full of suffering , Evil.
Will as said earlier is grand desire to live, until this desire lasts, man is to suffer, and Schopenhauer precisley says
Intellect opposes Will, and when this Will is restrained, there is an eternal struggle - This (knowledge - Intellect) is Pain. Here Take for example Lucretius' Death- he died because he knew too much - his intellect rebelled, exactly as Schopenhauer tell us. So Lucretius' suicide is individual triumph against Will - which is Genius according to him. But If Will and Intellect act simultaneously, Madness sets in because neither is restrained and madness is forgetting that we suffer. In a nutshell he dismisses the Whole Grand Desire To Live. If Genius is to Kill Oneself, then we are all hypocrites wanting to live. And he also says Christianity survived because it spoke of the doomsday, similar to Buddhism and hinduism - a philosophy he understood as negation of I and consciousness of death.
Schopenhauer's Misinterpretations:
Satchitanandam (Sat-Chid-Anandam is Absolute Living-Absolute Consciousness- Absolute Bliss) is the essense of Hindu Philosophy. It is not negation of I, but rather assimilation (Thou Art That), and when there is assimilation there is no grief and no struggle - it is Bliss.
Buddhistic Principle "Desire is the cause of sorrow"- here Desire is gratification of five senses, not the Will to live . And Will to Live is not Want, it is instinct which can grow even if the five senses are not satisfied.
If as he says the world is full of evil, we all must have ceased to live, after all that has happened to this world, but we do not , We still want to live - this desire or instinct does not stem from grief or sorrow, it stems from happiness within - which is unaffected - The all radiant Soul, and something that always offer Hope - whether it is the arrival of a saviour or resurrection or the beginning of a new world.
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